


O Sister, Where Art Thou

by harrietscats



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Future, Canon Rewrite, College Student Dipper Pines, Dipper Pines recounting her Gravity Falls Summer, Female Dipper Pines, Flashbacks, Future Fic, Gen, Gravity Falls Weirdness, Jewish Pines Family, Literally everything the same except Dipper's a girl, Near Future, Older Characters, Older Dipper Pines, Older Mabel Pines, Suspense, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6218698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietscats/pseuds/harrietscats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2012, a pair of sisters go to their great uncle's kitschy tourist trap in the woods for the entire summer. A death penalty as it was to whatever social standing the Pines sisters had, Dipper and Mabel soon learn that their great uncle's town comes with a few unexpected surprises.</p><p>In 2021, a pair of sisters are brought back to their great uncle's kitschy tourist trap in the woods by a stolen artifact, a ball of string, and a weathered statue left forgotten in the middle of the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. M.S. Pines? Who's that? (2020)

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. Let's see if you can catch all the pop culture references! This is a labor of love, and a convenient way to ignore all the other things I should be updating! Enjoy, and look for me on tumblr!

Hermeticism and Immortality:

The occult and the apocalypse narrative of the Burns Paiute People

A case study in Gravity Falls, Oregon 

 

By

 

M.S. Pines

  
  


B.A. (Columbia University, New York) 2015

M.A. (Columbia University, New York) 2017

M.A. (Harvard University, Cambridge) 2019

Ph.D. (Harvard University, Cambridge) 2020

 

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Archaeology

in the

Graduate Division

of

Harvard University

 

Committee in charge:

Associate Chairperson Dr. Amanita J. Meadow 

Dr. Benedick Quilter

Professor Anya Bernstein 

 

Spring 2021

 

 

 

Abstract: Upon examination of a hidden cave system attached to the Arnold Ice Cave, the Paiute people’s final footprints were left behind in their haste to escape invading Anglo-European settlers. This thesis will explore the footsteps of the final days of these people, and the portents they left behind in their flight to British Columbia. Using radiocarbon dating and chromosomal comparisons between the skeletal structures of the Peiute people left behind in the Arnold Ice Cave, exhumed corpses from Lindholm Høje in Denmark, and the ruins beneath  Abu Shahrein, Iraq, I will strive to uncover their familial bonds. I postulate that the people of Eridu colonized the Scandinavian regions, and the North American plateau; new discoveries unearthed at Abu Shahrein, Lindholm  Høje, and the Arnold Ice Cave show a common, unequivocal ceremonial link in art, architecture, and storytelling. It is my belief that the people who settled in Gravity Falls are the living descendants of the same tribe of people who grew from the “Cradle of Civilization”, who pictured a world in which the Hermetic arts continue to work their magic upon “machines”, the cosmos, and how they will prevent the ushering-in of the apocalypse.

 

                                                                        

* * *

 

 

[November 20, 2020]

[Harvard Divinity School]

[Cambridge, Massachusetts -- 1:01 am]

.

.

It took Dipper a few years, but she realized that the closing times of libraries were a little flexible when you were a freshman working on your second doctorate, and your academic advisor was okay with your extracurricular reading. No matter how jetlagged, how achy, how exhausted she was, Dipper would go from the labs in the Peabody Museum to the library at the Harvard Divinity School, pulling together resources on ancient alchemy and the apocalyptic religions of the Mesopotamian basin. It wouldn’t be until much later that Dipper would be wearing clean suits and latex gloves, manipulating three dimensional CT scans of the bones of ancient peoples, dictating notes on her phone as her eyes bleared behind her glasses and she reached for the third Red Bull that she really wasn’t supposed to have, but had anyway.

Dipper had gotten off a flight from Palestine, sunburned, freckled, and tan. Her hair had been freshly bleached, and her satchel thrown over her shoulder, haphazardly stuffed to the brim with empty granola bar wrappers, crumpled notes, and some dirty gauze. Boston was significantly chillier than the Sinai Peninsula; the change in temperature had given her a migraine, struck her silly with the flu. But that did not stop her from going straight to the library from the airport, burying herself in her little reading alcove with the non-circulated curricula.

That had been hours (days?) ago.

.

.

“Scarlett, go home.”

The name snapped her out of her stupor, made her look over her shoulder and search out this mysterious “Scarlett”. Why wasn’t this man calling her Dipper? Yeah, makeup might have concealed the reason why the nickname had hounded her since preschool, but she had called herself Dipper after that (it had even gone on her Common App). 

Dipper hadn’t called herself Dipper in social circles in almost six years. 

M.S. Pines was “Emm” in less familiar, more scholarly circles, where Dr. Pines did not suffice. Scarlett was for those between acquaintance and friend. But no one called her Dipper anymore, no one outside of family. 

Dipper looked up, sick and drowsy. Wes Yates stood over her, hair swept back off his forehead. It was the same color as her hair had once been, brown and full. He too wore glasses, all plastic and wire that dated him in an ironic way. In his hand was a plastic bag from CVS; it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. 

“I can’t go home yet, Wes,” said Dipper tiredly, turning around and digging through the bag while it was still in Wes’s possession. “Dr. Mulligan wants me to go out again within the week, and I can’t be sick.” 

She removed a box of Emergen-C, some Airborne, and Advil Cold and Sinus. The Emergen-C went into the half-full water bottle by her side. The Airborn tabs and a blister pack of Advil was swallowed with the Emergen-C and was chased by the dregs of her Red Bull. Dipper could feel her heart skip a beat. It hurt, but she was more aware than she had been before. 

“Oh?” Wes asked when Dipper turned around to regard her thesis materials. “Where to now, Lara Croft?”

Dipper smiled, pulled out her phone so she could further examine her email from her thesis advisor. “Well,” she mused, “it looks like it’s going to be France, or… ” She squinted. “Crete.”

Wes laughed, planted his hands on Dipper’s shoulders. “Crete? Haven’t you had enough sun for a while?”

Dipper looked at several photocopies of artwork depicted on a piece of pottery that had been recovered from an antechamber beneath the ruins of Gortyn. Cretan hieroglyphs highlighted the story of worship, of a group of women gathered around a great eye surrounded in a sea of flames. 

_ Fear the beast with just one eye.  _

“The Minoans are an interesting culture,” said Dipper painfully, covering up the photographs with her notes, her jacket. If the hand that clutched her empty can of Red Bull was just the slightest bit tighter, then that was just her own business now, wasn’t it? “I look forward to going there.”

But Wes was far more intuitive than Dipper gave him credit for. 

“Are you okay, Scar?” He asked. “You seem a little…”

“I’m fine,” said Dipper, voice tight. “Pakistan’s still on my brain.” 

Pakistan would probably forever be on her brain. It wasn’t every day you accidentally woke an extremely angry goddess who had been sealed by the male equivalent of a gal pal. Sure, she had shed some (read: a lot) of blood in the desert of the Indus Valley, but she had returned victorious. Enkidu’s spear was currently on its way to the United States; If she had been smart, Dipper would have relaxed in Palestine, let herself recover. 

Well, she did pamper herself. By the time she’d crawled out of the desert, her roots had grown roots. She’d needed a dye, bad. 

Wes laughed at that. “Yeah, letting you drive in Jerusalem was a mistake. Trust me.”

Dipper punched his arm and laughed. “Fine. The next time a spoiled goddess who likes to kill people for fun decides to be evil and  _ mean _ , you get to go into the desert for six months.” Smiling, she pushed him from her personal space. “Go, Wes. I’ll text you when the librarian finds me and calls me a cab.”

“The librarian calls you cabs?”

“More like she makes me open my phone and watches me hail a Lyft.”

Wes kissed the crown of Dipper’s head. He didn’t look pleased, but it wasn’t Dipper’s job to make him happy. “Oh, and Chels left paella in your fridge.”

Dipper let out an elated groan. “Oh my God I love her.” She peeked at him. “Tell her for me?”

“Tell her yourself.”

And then Dipper was alone. She could hear Wes retreating, hear his footsteps echoing further and further away until Dipper could no longer hear him. She was alone with her notes and her books and her reference materials. 

Pulling out her phone, suddenly serious, she activated the black light and shone it upon the documents she had hoarded. 

_ Found it again. Look at c.e.ixii  _

_ Apocalypse? How? When? Will Grunkle Ford have any info?  _

Then, scrawled across the photo of the Minoan vase: 

_ HE’LL COME BACK. _

_. _

_ _

 


	2. Dragons are totally...not real? (2021)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dipper is totally not Indiana Jones, and learns that museums aren't totally foolproof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's time for an imagine spot:
> 
> Imagine Dipper Pines being changed by Weirdmageddon (the Oddpocalypse, etc.). So she goes back to Piedmont, and she immediately becomes even more obsessed with school. So once she gets to high school, Dipper's already got her Masters in Applied Mathematics, and is working on her Ph.d. in Applied Physics. By the time she's in college, she's working on her anthropology and archaeology Ph.D.'s. She and her grunkle Ford are more involved and text constantly (once Grunkle Ford figures out how to work a smartphone; radios are still iffy).

[December 26, 2020]

[Paris, France]

[08:31]

.

.

If you asked Dipper what she would be doing in a decade when she had been twelve, she would have answered with her favorite career prospects: to graduate from high school with a high GPA, and get accepted into a good college, all so she could start her own ghost hunting show. And, it was something she was very passionate about, until...

Well...

Yeah.

She was twenty-one years old, nearly twenty-two. She had long since grown into the lankiness of prepubescence; she took after her mother, and therefore her grunkle, Ford. She was well at average height, still bony, with freckles from being out in the sunlight more hours than not. Her bleached hair had been pulled up, off of her forehead, wound in a braided bun. The parka she wore was black and lined for the winter. The grey scarf around her neck was warm and wool, lined. Her jeans and boots were also smart—freshly purchased during her last foray into Quincy Market. Once Dipper had gotten the okay to go to France on Christmas Eve; her bags were packed by Christmas morning.

Besides, she hadn't spoken to any of her family outside of texts since the first night of Hanukkah. She didn't have anyone in Boston besides herself. And her grunkles, whenever they called in port with the ol'  _Stan o' War II._

There was no one to see her away at the gate. No one to tell about her second Ph.D. Sure, once upon a time, she would have exploded the information all over her twin, but...

All Dipper had was herself. And, in the dead of night, when all she had was her thesis and a finger of scotch, she could convince herself it was all she needed.

She locked up her apartment by herself. She called her own Lyft, saw herself off at the airport. Her parents didn't know she was leaving the country until her dad called, asking after her for the new year. Perhaps she was imagining it, but he sounded relieved when Dipper said she wouldn't be able to make it.

She ordered herself a drink at the airport bar after that.

As if he could hear her distress, her grunkle called.

 _"My girl, I could feel the wheels turning,"_ said Ford Pines. His voice was tinny, distant. He must have been using a satellite phone; they were famous for having horrid service.  _"What's wrong?"_

She held up miraculously well. Dipper didn't cry once.

Well, that Ford could hear.

"I'm going to be a doctor again, Grunkle Ford," she said, smiling into her glass. "A few more pages, and I should be done."

 _"Oh_ eyniklekh _, that's fantastic! When do you cross? You must tell me so I can be there."_

"I promise, Grunkle Ford. Hey, keep Grunkle Stan in line, okay? I don't need any more surprise calls from a hospital in Indonesia, okay?"

From the other line, the aforementioned man called out, " _It was one time, Dipper! One stinkin' time, and no one on this_ fercockt _boat will let me forget it!_ "

Dipper smiled, downed the rest of her beer, and headed to her gate as her flight announced that boarding would be underway. "Guys," said Dipper, wiping away a stray tear with her thumb. "I have to go, my flight is boarding. I'll call you from France. Love you guys."

Once she was comfortable in her seat, Dipper popped three Dramamine, popped her headphones over her ears, and began typing on her laptop.

She was asleep before she had hit cruising altitude.

.

.

Dipper stepped off the Air France flight (nonstop from Logan International in her semi-native Boston to Charles De Gaulle in Paris) the following morning, shivering and clutching a sheaf of her thesis in hand. Scribbled in the margins were notes, belittlements, and compliments in red ink. A new title lay blocked out at the very top:

_Illuminating the myth: exploring and uncovering the mystery of Britain's greatest king._

Yeah. She was doing her dissertation on King Arthur. And it was actually getting really popular; the Medievalists in the English department there was ready to wring her neck for her insolence.

Customs was a hassle, as always. By the time she reached baggage claim, Dipper was utterly spent, and she hadn't even truly begun searching.

Dipper's eyes found a man holding up a white paper sign with  _La Louche_ written in cursive; she couldn't help but smile. He was terribly handsome, all blonde curls and green eyes. Sometimes, a woman or man caught sight of the sign, and gave the man a look, wondering why he was asking after a  _Dipper_ of all names. The absurdity was not lost on Dipper herself; those looks were just one of many she had gotten over the years, since she had begun truly calling herself by her twin's nickname. The only hint of her name she gave was on her anthropological or physics papers she published, but even those were simply signed "M. S. Pines, Ph.D.". She was quite the celebrity in 'Science', where an interviewer once spent thirty whole minutes trying to divest her real name from her, instead of asking about her most recently published paper.

Needless to say, he was very disappointed when Dipper said that her name was her own business.

Dipper crossed to the man, roll-away in hand, satchel thrown over a shoulder. The man greeted Dipper with a kiss to both cheeks, and a hand proffered to take her bags.

"Dr. Pines!" he said, once her freckled cheeks had cooled a bit. "A pleasure! My name is Gilles Favreau—not doctor yet, no, heavens no. Let me tell you, Dr. Vepond was  _être aux anges_ at the very thought of snagging you from your Harvard friends."

"Well," Dipper said, trying to sound important and scholarly in barely fluent French, "I'm more than pleased to be of service."

And that was the beginning of their partnership. She sat down with a greying man Gilles introduced as Dr. Vepond, and explained the parameters of her search, that she would need service of the Sorbonne's archives. The man was more than happy to assist, as long as Dipper noted the French team's part in her archaeological search. The man could have requested a ship's worth of Spanish gold, and Dipper would have delivered it to him.

With Gilles by her side, Dipper spent the new year in  _le Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne,_ scouring ancient illuminations and long forgotten narratives for any hint of what she was searching for. Several copies of  _La Chanson de Roland,_  miscellaneous  _chanson de gestes,_ and other texts from both the Matters of France and Britain were spread out at her little workstation; Gilles serve to be a criminally nice help in the wee hours, when they were among the last graduate students in the facility.

She analyzed rhyme scheme. She tore apart diction. She compared translations that varied only hundreds of years at a time. Dipper ate the Matter of France in days. The Matter of Britain was set aside; if she could prove, discover one last piece of lost history, then Albion was all but assured.

Dipper was interrupted at New Years. Her grunkles called her at midnight on New Years Day, Pacific Time. They were back in Oregon, back in Gravity Falls to celebrate. She talked to Melody and Soos briefly. She exchanged pleasantries with Wendy and Pacifica. The sound of all of their voices, wishing her well, made her terribly homesick and terribly guilty. The one person she wanted to talk to more than anything simply would not...

Her mother phoned briefly, but not her father. Her father was in China, overseeing production at Apple's main factory. He sent an email though, so it's the thought that counted. Her mother was awkward, as if she didn't know what to say to her youngest daughter.

Mabel...

"Gilles," called Dipper at just barely above a whisper, two days into the new year. She had been in the library since New Years Eve, drowning in manuscripts and illuminations and the notes of Occitan monks long dead. Perhaps it was her eyes playing tricks on her, but Dipper could have sworn she had seen something that simply hadn't been there when she had looked at it forty-eight hours earlier. " _Avec moi, si'l vous plaît._ I found something..." Here, she squinted. "I think."

Gilles leaned over her shoulder, looked at the manuscript Dipper had been perusing with both glasses and magnifying glass (it was true, the old adage about reading small print damaging the eyesight). Her latex-covered fingers gestured to an illumination of some sort of creature; if Dipper was completely honest, it looked like a tenth century rendering of the Swamp Thing.

Gilles scoured the Occitan script for what Dipper had seen. He mouthed the translated words from Occitan to French, furrow appearing between his brows.

He looked at her, skeptic.

"A dragon?" he deadpanned.

Dipper scoffed.

"Let's be real here, Gilles. Dragons don't exist."

* * *

[January 10, 2021]

[Hautes-Pyrénées, France]

[21:11 (?)]

.

.

So... dragons totally existed.

Well, to be specific, it was a French dragon called Le Velue, and it maybe... wasn't a dragon, exactly. Depending on who you asked in Provençal France, le Velue had either an ox-sized, porcupine-like body, or a mess of green, hair-like projections. If you chose that interpretation, then you had to deal with stinger-tipped tentacles. One thing remained static, no matter who she interviewed: it had those poisonous stingers, a snake's scales (this included neck, head, and tail), and large, tortoise-like feet. According to local legend, it had searing breath that weathered crops, was almost completely invulnerable, spat water and acid, and breathed fire. Occasionally, it's quills would be brought up, and Dipper Pines (Ph.D. in theoretical physics and anthropology, Masters in linguistics and mathematics) would comment, "Quills?" before intently scribbling down the information in her journal.

She had spent seven painful days in Provençal France, interviewing people who had claimed to hear Roland's Breach rumbling at night, who had woken up and seen that their crops had died, their fields had flooded. Accounts of people dying from poisoning, or acid attacks was rampant. Sure, they were sparse, but when you added up a collective history of roughly 200 years, it certainly added up.

The part about the creature creating floods for allegedly being denied access to Noah's Ark sounded like overkill, but Dipper knew a lot about overkill.

She had been buried alive in a shallow grave in Syria, once, all over a gambling debt of one American dollar.

Dipper clenched a small maglight between her teeth as she slid sideways through a fracture in the rocks barely large enough to fit her prepubescent body. The halogen light bounced off the moisture slick walls, causing microscopic refractions to shimmer faintly in between the narrow walls. In one hand, she clenched a long, wrapped package in both elk skin and a faded red banner emblazoned with a faded golden sun. In the other, she held onto a leather bound journal, filthy and worn. The cover was torn, the brass clasps dented and rusted. The maglight shone on the pages she was turning through one-handedly, moisture damp pages sticking together, fighting her desperation.

Forcing herself through a particularly narrow gap with a spat curse, Dipper shook her damp bangs from her eyes and juggled the package, the book, and the flashlight, until she could turn the book's pages. Her book.

"Okay, here we are," she hissed out, squinting in the gloom. "Le Velue's an invulnerable, dragon-like creature, who has been terrorizing the French countryside for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. This creature has not been known to hoard; it chooses instead to terrorize." Dipper scoffed, managed to pull a white pen out of her jacket pocket, and scrawled in the left hand corner under an image of Le Velue,  _"Hahaaa I was so wrong. SO WRONG!"_. All the while, she looked at the packaged wrapped in the red banner and elk skin shoved haphazardly under her arm. Dipper had found the greatest hoard of lost supernatural items she had ever seen, but there had been time to grab only what she had come for. That was how Dipper found herself with the package, a small dagger, and a small manuscript printed on vellum, bound in leather and gold. They joined two other books, a fragment of wood, and an ancient ball of string in her canvas satchel.

That was what woke the beast. A bloody ball of string.

"I guess the locals forgot to mention how much it likes hoarding legendary objects… " Dipper grumbled.

There was a roar in answer, a terrifying force that rocked the underground cavern system Dipper had been in for what felt like days. The sheer force of that roar sent stone cascading down in sheets, boulders, dust, pebbles. Dipper lost her balance as her foot plummeted into a fissure of rock that definitely hadn't been there moments ago. She struck the ground in a tight jumble of limbs. Her journal was pinned against her chest, the maglight tumbled from her mouth to fall to the ground, just barely out of finger's reach. She hissed, felt her grip on the package under her arm loosen as a boulder struck her shoulder. The angle she was pinned in was particularly unforgiving; Dipper cursed as she felt her shoulder give, but not pop—a small mercy. The fissure she was trapped in was beginning to fill with water; Dipper's heart leapt into her throat as she struggled to free her leg from where her foot remained trapped between two gaps in the rock floor beneath her.

The dragon could not find her, so it would drown her.

With a wrench and a cry of pain, Dipper jerked her foot as hard as she could, felt her ankle twist and bend, but not snap under strain. It swelled in her boot, but Dipper didn't mind; it would help her walk for as long as it took for her to escape. So she forced herself to her feet, arranged her items securely, and made her way forward, cheek pressed against the damp wall; water was swirling around her calves, and terror was gripping her chest, but still she ran, cursing the dragon-but-not-really, cursing her thesis, and cursing her assistant (Mr. "I'm so scared of the dark I'll be useless to you, Dr. Pines").

Useless her ass. He just wanted to drink himself to death.

Dipper cut her cheek as she erupted into the natural amphitheatre she had rapelled down into. Shining her light around urgently, she again took in her surroundings with a new sense of urgency brought on by danger and adrenaline. Surrounding the hole in the ceiling were natural basalt columns, enormous in size. Some were broken; others remained half-standing. Moisture pooled in a hollowed out bowl in the center, septic and brackish with age. It was a burial chamber, Dipper knew, a natural cave hollowed out for the burial of one of Charlemagne's most trusted and loyal vassals.

It was why she was here, after all. Rocamadour had been a lovingly fabricated red herring.

Coming to a heaving stop, Dipper's eyes found the simple rope that hung from the hole she and her assistant had bored into the rock face, swinging like a pendulum under Earth's natural rotation.

The dragon throwing a fit, of course, helped.

The water was up to her thighs now; Dipper sloshed toward the lowest fallen pillar, staring intently up at the edge just within finger's reach. Roughly, she threw the package atop the fallen pillar, shoved her journal into her satchel, and pulled herself up onto the flattened pillar, which had been destroyed by earthquake, or tantrum. She left skin and blood behind on the edge of the rough stone, but it was soon washed away by the surging water. By the time the first pillar had been submerged, Dipper had shoved the package securely across her back, utilizing the straps of her satchel to keep it in place, and had made a running leap for the next pillar.

This one, she barely cleared, hitting the edge chest-first and driving all the breath from her body. Dipper squirmed, dragged herself atop the pillar as the water began to lap at the sole of her dangling foot. There was no time to catch her breath; Dipper was already running up the diagonally resting pillar, pelvis low to orient her balance. Once she reached the head, she did not think as she leapt again for the next, even higher pillar. She caught a small, natural gap in the pillar, about a foot below the head. Booted feet scrabbled for purchase, and Dipper felt a nail break as she pulled herself up, over the top.

If her high school gym teacher could only see her now, maybe she'd take away that 89.

As Dipper hauled herself atop the pillar closest to the dangling rope (but still tragically out of reach) there was a sickening crack below her. Feeling something akin to terror, Dipper leant over the edge and looked down at the swirling whirlpool below. The fissure she had squeezed herself through was growing wider, with each beastly ram of the creature from the opposite side; the dragon-but-not-really was trying to force itself through that narrow crack in the earth, the one Dipper had fled through. All around, the amphitheater shook. As she watched, the ceiling began to crack, began to shower stone down into the rising whirlpool below.

It was going to bring the whole bloody mountain down atop the pair of them, all for a sword and some books.

There was no time left.

Taking a few minutes to calculate the odds of survival, to estimate the force she would need to make the leap, Dipper let out a quiet, "Holy Moses, I'm gonna die.". Sure, she had faced worse odds: that impromptu burial outside of Damascus, running from the Wild Hunt, almost losing her kidney to the gremlobin's long lost cousin in Iceland (it took her spleen instead). But these odds? Dipper didn't like them, not one bit.

Praying for the first time in what felt like ages, Dipper bolted for the hanging rope, leaping off the platform into open air, screaming all the way. She would have liked to say it was one of triumph, a last defiance to certain death. But if she were to be real, it was one of abject, pants-wetting fright.

Damn, it would be unfortunate if she missed.

Or dropped the package she had risked her life for.

Spoiler alert: she did neither.

Muscles screaming in protest, shoulders wrenched with pressure and agony, Dipper's hands found the rope; it burned her hands as she slid a foot, before she wrapped her injured leg around the remainder of the rope, drawing herself to a stop. Taking a breath, Dipper began to pull herself up hand over hand. There would be no one to help her; according to her watch, she had been underground for a full day. Her assistant would have headed back to town, to wait and see if Dipper lived or died.

Dipper cried out as she caught sight of something moving in the water below her. There was pain in her calf, but she had already pulled herself bodily from the hole, rolled out of the way, and watched, exhausted, as water followed her, began to pour down the cliff face in a particularly impressive waterfall. Provençal townsfolk would wonder where this waterfall had come from, but they would dismiss it as the work of Le Velue, the Peluda, whatever they wanted to call the beast that had shot quills into her left leg.

She groaned and fell backwards, soaking in the sunlight shining down upon Roland's Breach. Her leg throbbed, but the sunlight felt so good. Dipper was quite content to lie there forever and never move. Screw going back down the mountain, screw her thesis, screw everything. She was going to be absorbed into the hillside, and that was that.

Then, her satchel started vibrating. And it wouldn't stop. Dipper glared at it accusingly.

Well, there went her idea of dying from exposure.

Her satellite phone was singing some sort of song. The number was one she didn't recognize. She had half a mind to ignore it, but then she thought: What if it's school calling to check in on my dissertation?

So she answered it.

"Dr. Pines," she said, biting back a whimper of pain. Now that the adrenaline was washing out of her blood, all the pain was coming with it. Her ankle throbbed hotly. Her ribs spasmed. Her stomach roiled and cramped. Both shoulders burned, one more than the other. Such were the dangers of an archaeology student.

She made Nathan Drake look like a frat-boy co-ed. Indiana Jones was nothing more than a hipster larker. Even Lara Croft (who Dipper worshipped) paled in comparison. She was Awesome—capitalization intended.

There was a pause as Dipper listened with half awareness to the voice on the other line. Her eyes were closed, the sunshine was warm, and far below her, the mountain vibrated with the final tantrum of the creature she had stolen from. Even the biting cold was bracing, almost comforting. She almost didn't mind that she was soaked to her underwear. Her clothes were almost as ruined as all the artifacts that she had not been able to collect.

Damn, her professor (a man involved heavily in lost supernatural things as well as ancient Occitan artwork) would be annoyed with all those destroyed artifacts in the creature's hoard.

Dipper's mind ground to a halt as she listened to the voice on the other line. How could someone sound so calm when...

Then, there was terror.

Dipper shot upwards, pain lancing through her leg, her chest, strangling her heart like that golem from three weeks pas was wringing it. Her breath came in small, petrified gasps; reflexive tears filled her eyes as pain and fear dizzied her.

"I'm sorry…  _what?!_ "

* * *

 

[January 5, 2021]

[Hautes-Pyrénées to Charles de Gaulle International Airport to ?]

[16:14]

.

.

It had been a sixteen hour hike from Roland's Breach to Hautes-Pyrénées, made even longer by a broken ankle and snapped tendon. In Hautes-Pyrénées, it had taken no time to find her assistant in the hotel bar. They briefly shared a drink to her victory, to her success, and to the new waterfall the locals were already beginning to sing praises about. With no time to spare, Dipper checked out of her hotel room, ignored all injuries (despite her assistant attempting to maul her with iodine and gauze), and quickly, but gently, packaged all the items—save the one that had caused her such trouble—in climate controlled crates. These were addressed to 11 Divinity Avenue in Massachusetts, and sent priority mail with the stipend supplied by her university. On her way from Hautes-Pyrénées to Paris by train, she and Gilles sat in awkward silence. The man recognized the anxiety in his young charge, watched with knowing eyes as she typed out several messages on her personal phone, sent several snapchats, even called a few times. Each time she stopped the call once the voicemail was reached, Dipper seemed to grow more anxious, more fearful.

" _Mon amie_ ," said Gilles, once they passed Toulouse, and the silence had become crushing. "What's the matter?" He said this in French; his English was okay, but he grew tired of Dipper correcting him all the time, and Dipper's French was fairly decent, and it gave him ample opportunity to return the favor.

This, Dipper didn't answer. She stared intently out the window as if it could solve all of her problems. So Gilles filled the silence with inane chatter: what he was watching, what he did while Dipper was running for her life underground. If she found the legendary Sword of Roland.

To this, Dipper shrugged, despite the package in elk skin and banner being magicked into her backpack at her earliest convenience. As far as the world knows, Durendal was embedded in the rock face of Rocamadour, and that was where it would remain.

"There was a dragon, though," Dipper said. " _Il était très terrible_."

"A dragon?  _Mon dieu_."

Mon dieu indeed.

They pulled into Montparnasse station about three hours before Dipper's plane was due to depart. It was the longest Dipper had been in sunlight since she had escaped the underground cave in the Breach of Roland. Standing on the sidewalk outside the train station, Gilles held an umbrella over their heads as he tried to hail her a cab.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong,  _la Louche?_ " he asked, as the seventh cab passed them by. "You seemed quite pale on the way here."

Dipper shrugged, anxiety eating away at her stomach hard enough to make her nauseous. Her mother always said that she had a nervous stomach; it made flying a bloody nightmare.

"Nothing that can't be fixed," said Dipper finally.

Finally, Gilles succeeded in his quest. A black cab pulled alongside the sidewalk; Gilles helped the cabbie load Dipper's bags into the boot. Once he was done they stood on the pavement—her in the gutter, he on the curb. Gilles kissed her on both cheeks—gentler this time, with more intimacy—and ordered her to text once she was back on American soil.

"I will miss your wit,  _l_ _a Louche_ ," said Gilles as Dipper slid into the rear of the cab.

"And I'll miss your company, Gilles," said Dipper, holding his hand in a tight squeeze for just a moment longer.

They locked eyes, then she was gone.

" _Jusqu'où, mademoiselle?_ " the cabbie asked.

After a minute, Dipper said, absentmindedly, " _L'aéroport, s'il vous plaît, monsieur._ "

In an airport bathroom a full hour before her departure via Air France, Dipper took a small, black case out of her carry-on, and went to the nearest bathroom. There, she paid attention to her various wounds in a locked bathroom stall, with the help of some travel-sized vodka. Her ankle was beyond help at the moment; it would have to be cared for once she was back on American soil. Her ribs were treated with some bruise cream and were wrapped with a roll of gauze. Her shoulder, she left alone. She wasn't in the mood to accidentally break her arm in an airport bathroom trying to slip the partial dislocation back in place. Sufficiently fixed, and with half an hour to spare, Dipper unlocked the stall door and headed to the row of sinks. It was there that she caught the first proper look at herself in three days.

Her jaw was bruised, the cut on her cheek was beginning to fester, and the concealer on her forehead was beginning to fade. Her eyes were hooded and tired; the left was bruised slightly from a run in with a ledge. There was some blood tacked to her lips; she had wondered why the ticket agent had given her such a look when she presented her license and passport for identity checks and stamping.

Now she knew.

Dipper wiped blood from her lips, her cheek with some water. She dotted antibacterial cream on the festering cut. She splashed her face with water and ran a wet hand through her tangled brown hair, curly and wavy and twisted with humidity, oil, and now water. With cramping hands, Dipper braided her bangs away from her face.

In the process, the last vestiges of makeup on her forehead came off.

Her eyes lingered on the splotchy mark that took up her entire forehead accusingly. How many times as a child had she merely watched it, hid it, scrunched her bangs as far down on her forehead as she could? Until she discovered makeup at the end of the eighth grade and could finally push her bangs off her forehead? Briefly, Dipper contemplated leaving it alone, letting her greatest source of anxiety show with some modicum of pride. But that moment was soon gone; Dipper dabbed some concealer on her forehead, set it with powder, and scraped her bangs over her forehead with a self-conscious action that hadn't been seen since her freshman year of high school. The beanie sitting beside her on the sink was maroon in color (she missed the white and blue one with the pine trees stitched into it); without a second glance, Dipper jammed the beanie on her head and went back to her terminal seat to gather her bags and wait to board her plane.

Once in her seat (Business Class), she downed three Dramamine, two Percocet (a leftover prescription from her run-in with a wendigo in Northern Canada), some prescription Zofran, and ordered a vodka orange once they reached cruising altitude. It was amazing what prescription drugs and alcohol did to a nervous stomach, despite all those warnings to not take alcohol with narcotics.

She was never one to pay much attention to warnings. If she heeded any warnings whatsoever, she wouldn't have found Enkidu's spear.

Well, maybe she wouldn't have summoned a Babylonian goddess, but that was beside the point.

Dipper first landed in John F. Kennedy Airport seven hours later, on the following day. The customs agent was more than happy to inspect her laptop, her cell phone, and her bag for bomb residue. In a way, Dipper couldn't blame them; she had only just been removed from the no-fly list after sending back an artifact from Iran that happened to be mildly radioactive. A few curt calls from her thesis professor, the dean of academics, and a… wild card, for lack of a better term, did fix that. Eventually.

Well, a famous uncle in theoretical and metaphysical physics did tend to be a plus.

During her layover, Dipper Skyped her thesis review board, screamed at a few people in France holding her thesis hostage ( _"Ces artefacts ne seront pas durer beaucoup plus longtemps dans ces caisses. Si vous ne les relâchez pas maintenant, je vais te tuer moi-même!"_ ), and took some more Zofran and Percocet, washed down with a neat whiskey from a sports bar (the Rangers were winning in overtime).

Her next text was to Gilles. She did promise, after all. He replied with a thumbs up emoji and a snapchat of him in some Parisian café.

She called her parents next, just to let them know she was home. And no, she wouldn't be home for Purim this year ("But maybe next year," she said, lying). But Dipper would be giving a lecture at CalTech, if they were interested on attending. Her uncle would be there as a collaborator on her last paper, and it had been a while since they had all been in the same room together.

Her mom beat around the bush, but Dipper knew they wouldn't be attending. They wouldn't attend as long as...

Dipper's thumb lingered on a contact. All it was was a shooting star, unicorn, and cake emoji (in that order). The phone icon was taunting her; besides, it was worth it to try, wasn't it? Turn the other cheek and all that?

She turned her phone off, and boarded her flight, bound for Logan International, based out of Boston. Well on her way to drunk, Dipper ordered another whiskey and closed her eyes as soon as she was in her seat.

She was going to the last place she could go. The last place in the world where she could get help. And damn if that wasn't bringing any memories.

She landed in Boston shortly before midnight, after twenty-seven hours of straight travel. When she powered on her phone, she had several messages from her thesis advisor, a series of snapchats from Gilles during one of his classes, and a text from Soos. She had called him on the train from Hautes-Pyrénées, explained the situation. She had reached out to her grunkles (Last Dipper checked, they were maybe in Antarctica?), but the service had been so disrupted, they couldn't speak to one another. In the end, Dipper had hung up, and collected her bags from the baggage claim. 

A cab was already waiting for her. Her advisor had arranged it.

The driver left her off at the Peabody, whose lights were on; there were four police cars parked outside, and the curator was outside being interviewed by an unsmiling man in a jacket, as if being called to a museum robbery in the dead of night was the worst thing of his life. 

"Ma'am," said a policeman in blue. "You can't go any further."

Snappish, Dipper shouldered past him. 

"My name is Dr. M.S. Pines. Whoever robbed the museum took my stuff."

That got the man's attention. As overtired as he was, he wanted this solved as much as she did. 

"I'm Detective Breckenridge." He regarded her with a skeptical eye. "You look a little young to be a doctor."

Yeah, it wasn't like she hadn't heard that one before. Dipper squared her shoulders and stared at the man.

"I have two Masters degrees and a doctorate and a half."

"A half?"

Dipper raised her eyes at the police tape cordoning off the entrance to the Peabody. "The other half just walked off with whomever decided to rob me."

That got the detective's attention. 

"You think you were targeted directly?" the detective asked; Dipper noticed that his phone was recording their conversation. She scowled. 

"Well, was their anything else taken?"

Detective Breckenridge gestured for a policeman wearing an anorak with  _Forensics_ embroidered thickly on the back. She handed over a tablet, which the detective perused. 

"One spear—"

"Early Dynastic I period. It's hundreds of thousands of years old."

The detective looked at her skeptically.

"One old spear. Thirty-three... seal stones?" Dipper raised an eyebrow, waiting to see if the detective wanted an explanation. When he snorted derisively and continued onward, Dipper decided she didn't like him very much. "Six copper plates—"

"Six?" Dipper said. 

"Six."

Good. Whoever stole her things forgot three more. 

"What else?"

"Some stones taken from the Isle of Man, Brittany, and Scotland, and some notes."

Dipper crossed her arms and resisted the urge to curse. All of her data scavenged over a hear and a half, gone. All she had were the contents of her bag, and what she kept in her apartment. 

"Was my apartment hit, too?"

Detective Breckenridge shook his head. "No, and we have an officer posted there, in case they decide to come by."

Unsurprisingly, Dipper wasn't comforted. 

"Detective, if that's all, I'd like to be taken back to my apartment. I've been traveling for over a day now, and I'd like to sleep in my own bed."

The man was reluctant to let her go, but there was nothing to hold Dipper on; the curator was handling the break in itself, Dipper confirmed it was her items stolen. It was now in the police's hands. With nothing left to do, he took down Dipper's phone number, and ordered a lingering policeman to provide her with a lift home. 

It was surprisingly easy, and surprisingly quick. The officer stationed outside of her apartment was polite, declined the coffee she offered him tiredly. It was almost three in the morning; she had to pack. 

Her apartment was a converted loft, all old and new furnishings melded together seamlessly. True to his word, her friend Chels had left a wrapped plate of paella in her fridge, next to her iced tea and pack of Pabst. She grabbed one, and the paella, and ate it cold at her kitchen table while she scrolled through her phone. She couldn't sleep. She wouldn't sleep. 

The beer was finished quickly; Dipper reached into her fridge and grabbed a Red Bull. With half a plate of food left, Dipper retreated to her bedroom with her suitcase, dumped it on her bed, and began packing for the northwest.

It was time to leave Boston. There was nothing left for her there. Dipper knew she had been stepping into something that should have been left untouched; Syria was the first warning. Pakistan the second. This was her third (and dare she say it final?) warning. 

It was time to leave. 

It was time to go back to Gravity Falls.

.

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* * *

 

[January 7, 2021]

[US I-90]

[22:31]

.

.

It was 2,934 miles from her apartment in Beacon Hill to Gravity Falls, Oregon. If she had been traveling by bus, or by train, or even airplane, Dipper would have been miserable, drugged to the gills and trying very hard to get drunk. But she wasn't. She elected to drive. 

It helped her clear her mind, that much was certain. She drove with the windows down, the radio as loud as possible, and tried her damnedest to drown out the anger; it had taken everything in her not to break into the Peabody herself, figure out who had stolen her stuff, and curse the pants off them. Literally, not figuratively. Magic was more than a little helpful in her line of work. 

Dipper didn't make many stops; in Chicago, she stopped off at a helpful wizard cum private eye for some advice. Afterwards, she did not stop for hours, not until she reached Colorado. There she sat on the hood of her car, watched the sun rise with a blanket over her shoulders and a Red Bull in hand. She hadn't slept in over forty-eight hours; a part of her wanted to rest, a part of her wanted to keep going. 

She text Soos instead, let him know she was a thousand miles out from Gravity Falls. 

This enthralled Soos. He chattered endlessly over the phone while Dipper snacked on a granola bar, drank from her Red Bull, and climbed back into her car. His and Melody's daughter was three, and the Mystery Shack (now called the Mystery Mansion) was growing like a weed. Apparently they had gotten a HuffPost spot a while back. Soos had even splurged for a Snapchat filter. 

"Oh, I can't wait to tell Grunkle Stan that one," Dipper laughed. 

" _Oh, Mr. Pines knows,_ " Soos said. " _He had no idea what it was, but he wanted to make sure I stole it._ "

"Good ol' Grunkle Stan." She crossed the Colorado border shortly after that. "See you soon, Soos."

_"See you soon, Dips."_

.

.

Dipper Pines entered Gravity Falls in the small hours of the morning. The Oregon forest was quiet, serene, flaked with snow and ice. For the longest while, there was nothing, no turnoffs or spurs. Then, there was a brown sign that said "Gravity Falls 1 mile".

One mile. 

It felt hollow, without her twin beside her.

She saw a gnome (Shmebulock?) half an hour later. The double headed deer clan followed. In the distance, Dipper could swear she heart the howl of the Multibear. The caffeine was wearing off, as was the narcotics she had taken somewhere around Idaho. It left her feeling quite hysterical.

Dipper underestimated how many memories would be brought up as soon as she passed the border. 

One hand on the wheel, she took two more Zofran (this time taken with some Red Bull; she was too tired to travel, too jet lagged, but she couldn't sleep— _wouldn't_  sleep). Almost sixty hours without sleep, and she was beginning to wonder where reality began or ended. 

_Fear the beast with just one eye, pine tree. Fear. ME._

Her breath fogged the window as she pulled onto the shoulder, just within Gravity Falls's border. Hammered into the flesh of a tree was a sign:  _This way to a world of imagination! Two miles this way to the Mansion of Mystery!_

Dipper was almost embarrassed that she began crying.

Sniffling, she wiped at her eyes, and dialled one, final number.

It rang. And rang. And rang. 

_"Hello, this is Dr. Stanford F. Pines. You've reached my... Lee, what is this? You don't know either? Oh well. I guess you... talk after I'm done talking? Okay? Oka—"_

There was a beep, cutting off her grunkle's words. For a second, Dipper didn't say anything; she was too busy sniffling, trying valiantly not to cry.

"Um… Grunkle Ford? It's—it's Dipper." She let out a choked sob. "I don't—I don't know if you're going to get this, or when you are, but..."

How the hell could she tell her greatest benefactor that she had failed? The cheerleader always in her corner? She did her greatest work on the  _Stan o' War II_ ; that was where she got her first doctorate at nineteen, had her first drink (the one her parents knew about, at least) with her grunkles.

It was where it happened.

"Grunkle Ford, I need help," she sobbed, gloved hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to smother the noise. "I need so,  _so_  much help. So please...  _please_  call me back. It's an emergency."

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End file.
